Sep 082020
 

Almost every time I see criminal Fuhrer Trump*, aka Nincompoop Nero, he crows about his wonderful economic recovery, calling it the best recovery in US history.  He also claims that if Joe Biden becomes President, he will destroy the economy.  In truth, Nincompoop Nero fiddled while America burned.

0908TrumpJobLoss

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough was astonished by a detailed analysis of the economic pain suffered by many American workers — but not all of them.

“Morning Joe” contributor Steve Rattner, a former economic adviser to President Barack Obama, brought charts to fact check claims by President Donald Trump and his advisers about the recovery since the coronavirus pandemic destroyed the U.S. economy.

“The pace of job recovery is actually slowing fairly dramatically,” Rattner said. “One other small point, the 8.4 percent unemployment rate is really 9.1 percent — the Department of Labor said there was a misclassification error, so that number isn’t as good either. Let’s turn to this question whether we’re dealing with a broad-based recovery of jobs or something more narrow. What you can see on the next chart are the disparities in how different Americans have fared. This is because the pandemic or the economic crisis didn’t hit every industry equally, travel, recreation, restaurants, so on, where people of color, lower income, women work and it was hit disproportionately hard.”

“If you are a Black person, 11.2 percent of Blacks lost their jobs, compared to 6.4 percent of whites,” he added. “If you have less than a high school diploma, almost 19 percent of those folks lost their jobs. If you have a college degree, you probably didn’t lose your job at all, because virtually none of them lost their jobs since this started.”…

Inserted from <Alternet>

Here’s the included video.

 

As you can see, Trump* and the Republican Reich* have destroyed the economy, and the recovery is both too slow and decreasing over time.  If Biden becomes President, he needs to shut down at once, support those who do, perform extensive testing and contact tracing, and wait till it’s safe to re-open.  That will allow a rapid recovery.  I’d like to say it will be a complete recovery, but many of the jobs Republicans destroyed are gone and will never come back.  To fully recover we need major investments in infrastructure and green energy to put America to work.  If Trump* had shut down properly, Trump* virus would be behind us already.  So we can’t blame Biden for the short term effects of doing what Trump* should have done.

RESIST!!

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May Next Labor Day Be Blue!

 Posted by at 11:05 am  Holiday, Politics
Sep 072020
 

Labor-day2012 
For most of my early life I considered Labor Day little more than a day off at the end of summer.  That’s because I am not a union man.  I have never belonged to a union, nor has anyone in my family.  So what has the labor movement done for me?  I have learned what organized labor has done to improve the lot of all American workers, and I have come to understand that Labor Day is a celebration of Union labor, and one that is well deserved. This is a another variation on last year’s article.

laborThinkProgress has assembled just five of the many things that Americans can thank the nation’s unions for giving us all: 1. Unions Gave Us The Weekend: Even the ultra-conservative Mises Institute notes that the relatively labor-free 1870, the average workweek for most Americans was 61 hours — almost double what most Americans work now… 2. Unions Gave Us Fair Wages And Relative Income Equality: As ThinkProgress reported earlier in the week, the relative decline of unions over the past 35 years has mirrored a decline in the middle class’s share of national income… 3. Unions Helped End Child Labor: “Union organizing and child labor reform were often intertwined” in U.S. history, with organization’s like the “National Consumers’ League” and the National Child Labor Committee” working together in the early 20th century to ban child labor… 4. Unions Won Widespread Employer-Based Health Coverage: “The rise of unions in the 1930′s and 1940′s led to the first great expansion of health care” for all Americans, as labor unions banded workers together to negotiate for health coverage plans from employers… 5. Unions Spearheaded The Fight For The Family And Medical Leave Act: Labor unions like the AFL-CIO federation led the fight for this 1993 law, which “requires state agencies and private employers with more than 50 employees to provide up to 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave annually for workers to care for a newborn, newly adopted child, seriously ill family member or for the worker’s own illness.” … [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Think Progress> It’s well worth the time to click through for the rest of this article. Furthermore, here is an excellent video on what labor has done for America.

Therefore, to begin my celebration of Labor Day in the best possible way, I wish to thank all of you who are or have been union workers.  My life is better because of you.  And to you and everyone else, have as Happy a Labor Day as is possible during a Republican plague and under a Republican Reich! Sadly, because of ongoing, predatory Republican impingement on workers’ rights, this article is even less true than it was  last year.  It’s up to YOU to change that trend.  Unless we remove Trump* and the Republican Reich from power, they will outlaw workers’ right to organize, and the US will become a permanent Republican Fifth Reich!  Unless you want to be forced to say Heil Trump*…

Support Labor!

Dump Trump!!

RESIST!!!

VOTE BLUE!!!!

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Sep 072020
 

It’s a relatively lazy holiday  here in the CatBox.  My esophageal tumor is making eating more painful and difficult.  I’ll talk to Evelyn about that, when I go in Wednesday.  My AC is acting up intermittently.  When I woke up, this morning, it was pumping out heat and the inside temp was 89°.  It wouldn’t power down, so I flipped the circuit breaker.  Then I coaxed it into working again, for now.  I’m babying it until Maintenance Dept. gets here.  Of course this has to happen on a 3 day weekend.  If you’re driving, please stay safe.  Thank God it’s Monday.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 2:48 (average 4:24).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Cartoon:

Trump* Virus Update:

0907TrumpVirusMap

Click for interactive map

US Cases: 6,462,189
US Deaths: 193,259
Plus thousands of GOP plague murder victims Republicans are hiding from us.

Short Takes:

From Alternet: Warning of the very real chance of a “nightmare scenario” in which President Donald Trump misleads the American people over the results of the November election—or refuses to leave office voluntarily if voted out—Sen. Bernie Sanders is raising the alarm and mobilizing his army of supporters to be aware of just how dangerous a game the president is now playing.

In an interview with Politico and an email sent to his massive email list Friday, Sanders suggested that too many news organizations, social media companies, and lawmakers—in addition to the broader public—remain unaware of the manner in which Trump is laying the groundwork for a potentially devastating series of events.

“Trump is now using his lies and misinformation to sow confusion and chaos in the election process and undermine American democracy,” stated in the email, sent to millions of his supporters on Friday. “In other words, he does not intend to accept the results of the election if he loses and leave office voluntarily. This is not just a ‘constitutional crisis.’ This is a threat to everything this country stands for.”

Speaking with Politico earlier in the day, Sanders said one crucial thing to be done immediately is to educate people. “What we have got to do in the next two months is to alert the American people about what that nightmarish scenario might look like in order to prepare them for that possibility and talk about what we do if that happens,” he said… [emphasis added]

I fully agree with Bernie. The people of the US need to be fully informed about Trump’s* likely intent to overthrow the government of the US and how he is setting up an attempt to do so.  RESIST!!

From YouTube (CNN Channel): Schiff: Barr flat-out misled with a ‘blatantly false statement’

Barrf Bag Alert!!

 

If Russia, Trump* and the Republican Reich were not working together, their propaganda lies would not be identical. As for Barrf, he’ll never catch up to Trump*, his Fuhrer, in number of lies told, but he sure as hell is trying!  RESIST!!

From YouTube (a blast of past protest): Phil Ochs Draft Dodger Rag

 

Ah… the memories! Protest like the 60s!  RESIST!!

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!

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Sep 062020
 

It’s a busy day here in the CatBox.  WWWendy will be here in about an hour.  I’ll be back in the saddle and laboring here tomorrow.  Please stay safe!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:18 (average 4:54).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Cartoon:

Trump* Virus Update:

0906TrumpVirusMap

Click for interactive map

US Cases: 6,432,209
US Deaths: 192,864
Plus thousands of GOP plague murder victims Republicans are hiding from us

Short Take:

From YouTube (a blast of protest): Jefferson Airplane -White Rabbit

 

Ah… the memories! Protest like the 60s!  RESIST!!

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!

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Another Reason to Unplug!

 Posted by at 12:11 pm  Politics
Sep 052020
 

If I had a nickel for every time I’ve suggested that you dump Fakebook, we could all retire in comfort.  I trust you know that Fakebook was a major vehicle for distributing Republican lies from Russian bots to help Trump* steal the White House in 2016.  Fakebook’s claims that they didn’t know those accounts were Russian fall flat, because Russia paid the bill for them in Rubles.  Fakebook now has a new way to assist Trump this year.  That’s another reason to unplug!

0905Fakebook

Facebook this week said it would bar political ads in the seven days before the presidential election. That could prevent dirty tricks or an “October surprise” and give watchdogs time to fact-check statements. But rather than responding with glee, election officials say the move leaves them worried.

Included in the ban are ads purchased by election officials — secretaries of state and boards of elections — who use Facebook to inform voters about how voting will work. The move effectively removes a key communication channel just as millions of Americans will begin to navigate a voting process different from any they’ve experienced before.

“Every state’s elections office has a very small communications office that is doing everything that they can to get the word out about the election,” said Gabe Rosenberg, the communications director for Connecticut Secretary of the State Denise Merrill (who is not related to this reporter). “This just makes it a little bit harder, for, as far as I can see, no real gain.”

The rule change was announced Thursday in a Facebook post  [Fakebook delinked] by the site’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Previously, Facebook’s rules [Fakebook delinked] for fact-checking certain campaign ads but not others have come under fire. Taken together, they demonstrate how Facebook has become an integral piece of the American democratic process — but one that is controlled by the decisions of a private corporation, which can set rules in its own interest…

Inserted from <Raw Story>

NYT columnist on Facebook’s new rules to ban new political ads one week before the election

 

Here’s the rest of the story.  The only people that this rule cuts off are political campaigns and governmental organizations.  Other organizations that disseminate political messages on Fakebook are dominated by the extreme right, so the Republican Reichsministry of Propaganda, Faux Noise, Breitfart, and thousands of Russian bots, courtesy of Putin [R-RU], are free to spew their garbage on Fakebook at an even higher rate than they did in 2016.

If Fakebook really wanted to protect their users victims, they could outlaw all political messaging for six months before elections and US political messaging from foreign accounts at all times, but that will never happen.  Why?  It would take too many Rubles out of Mark Fuckerberg’s pocket!

With Fakebook, the only way to win is not to play!

Unplug!

 

RESIST!!

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Sep 052020
 

It’s a hectic Saturday here in the CatBox.  I got up a half an hour early this morning, so I could get a head start and a longer morning map.  So much for the best laid plans of mice and men…, and far too often, of Puddy Tats.  A hacker must have broken into the Bluehost server and hacked the email PW of the PP admin email account.  I know it could not have come from my computer, because I have never sent email from admin.  Incoming admin email auto-forwards to my tomcat PP email account.  The hacker then set up a SPAM bot to to send Republican propaganda from PP.  It quickly started failing due to our 250/hour sent-email limit, so for each failed piece of SPAM, admin forwarded a mailer-daemon notice to my tomcat account.  I woke up to find over 4,500 notices in my inbox.  I fixed the problem by changing the admin PW, but between figuring that out and cleaning up the mess, it took me over two hours.  Instead of a long nap, I got a very short nap, and I’m still quite a bit late.  If you sent me email that got lost in the mess, please resend it. Tomorrow is a WWWendy in the morning day, so please expect no more than a Personal Update from me.  Please stay safe in holiday traffic.  Have a great weekend.

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:35 (average 5:41).  To so it, click here.  How did you do?

Cartoon:

Trump* Virus Update:

0905TrumpVirusMap

US Cases: 6,392,303
US Deaths: 192,168
Plus thousands of GOP plague murder victims Republicans are hiding from us

Short Takes:

From TPM: White supremacists pose the most serious terror threat to the United States, according to a draft report from the Department of Homeland Security.

Three different drafts of the report obtained by Politico characterize the threat from white supremacists as the deadliest domestic terror threat in the United States.

All three documents also report that 2019 was the deadliest year for domestic violent extremists since the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995.

The documents indicate that “lone offenders” and “small cells of individuals” are increasingly joining up with people who share their ideologies and “will pose the primary terrorist threat to the United States.” 

“Among these groups, we assess that white supremacist extremists – who increasingly are networking with likeminded persons abroad – will pose the most persistent and lethal threat,” the report indicates.

Here, we already know that, but far to many don’t. TELL THEM!  RESIST!!

From YouTube (Liberal Redneck Channel): Liberal Redneck – QAnonsense

 

I have to disagree with Trae. Calling Republican QAnon conspiracy believers “dumb shits” is far too insulting to dumb shits.  RESIST!!

From YouTube (a blast of protest): Creedence Clearwater Revival – Fortunate Son

 

Ah… the memories. Protest like the 60s!  RESIST!!

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!

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Video thread 9/4/2020

 Posted by at 11:59 am  Politics
Sep 042020
 

VoteVets – Explicit condemnation of Trump*s “suckers and losres” statement.

Really American – Speaks for itself.

RVAT – one more comment on Trump*s belittling of the military, especially those who lost their lives.

Lincoln Project Tweet – Don’t we all wish THIS were true!

Indian Visual Panet – not intended as an ad, but IMO very telling

Sometimes, as a former Marine, I forget that not everyone knows what Beau is talking about here. It’s worth remembering. (Sorry no CC. If you have a Google account, you may be able to enable it through Options.)

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Sep 042020
 

It’s another sweltering day here in the CatBox with a high of 95°.  Last night I executed my Last Will and Testament.  WWWendy was thrilled to learn that she gets both the liver and the plunger.  I overslept and had a hearty breakfast of gooped potatoes, ground beef, cheese and gravy, gooped watermelon, mixed berry yogurt and apple juice, so I’m running later.  Diana will be here in the next 45 minutes to check my butt fungus.  Wendy has to work, so she can’t be here to make a video of the event.  Update:  I have a mildly infested but much more contented ass! Happy Hump Day!

Jig Zone Puzzle:

Today’s took me 3:09 (average 4:46).  To do it, click here.  How did you do?

Cartoon:

A past blast of protest

Trump* Virus Update:

0904TrumpVirusMap

US Cases: 6,338,119
US Deaths: 191,138
Plus thousands of GOP plague murder victims Republicans are hiding from us

Short Takes:

From YouTube (Parody Project Channel): ARREST THIS SCARY GENTLEMAN

AMEN, Don! “No Joy” belongs behind bars with his beloved criminal Fuhrer Trump*!  RESIST!!

From YouTube (MSNBC Channel): Jacob Blake Spoke To Biden From His Hospital Bed, Says Family Attorney

Biden’s Kenosha trip was the polar opposite from Trump’s*. Biden conciliated; Biden told the truth; Trump* spewed lies.  Trump* threatened. Biden offered solutions; Trump* offered failures. Biden supported victims and upholders of law and order; Trump* supported Gestapo and abusers of power. Biden showed love; Trump showed fear (the opposite of love).  RESIST!!

From YouTube (a blast of protest): Vietnam War-House of the Rising Sun

From now on, I’ll keep looking for material haven’t used before. Because that’s so hard to find, expect mostly reruns. Protest like the 60s!  RESIST!!

Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!

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